


Among the Missing

by Shi_Toyu



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Childhood, Family Issues, Family Secrets, Gen, Hydra (Marvel), Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Human Experimentation, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kid Fic, Kid Tony Stark, Pre-HYDRA Reveal, Red Room (Marvel), Secrets, Tony Being Tony, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony-centric, Unreliable Narrator, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 19:28:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15589086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shi_Toyu/pseuds/Shi_Toyu
Summary: Tony had always been a curious child. It was just something about the way he was wired. It got him into trouble more than a few times, but he also knew it was something his father really liked about him. So, even if he got punished for snooping somewhere he didn’t belong, Tony felt no inclination to try and suppress his curious urges. The one thing he wanted, more than anything else, was to make his father proud. At the tender age of eight, there was no one Tony admired more than his father, Johann Schmidt, Red Skull, Head of Hydra.





	Among the Missing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skye_07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skye_07/gifts).



> Happy birthday for the AMAZING Skye! You are so incredible and wonderful in so many ways! I am proud to call you my friend and I hope you enjoy this little piece.
> 
>  
> 
> Additionally, this serve to fill my Tony Stark Bingo square K2: Unreliable Narrator

Tony had always been a curious child. It was just something about the way he was wired. It got him into trouble more than a few times, but he also knew it was something his father really liked about him. So, even if he got punished for snooping somewhere he didn’t belong, Tony felt no inclination to try and suppress his curious urges. The one thing he wanted, more than anything else, was to make his father proud. At the tender age of eight, there was no one Tony admired more than his father, Johann Schmidt, Red Skull, Head of Hydra.

He just wished his father would pay attention to him a bit more.

Oh, his father was quick to praise him if he managed to come up with some invention to help their cause, such as upgrading their weaponry or other tools, but that attention was fleeting, and his father was always quickly on to something else. It didn’t help that Tony still had a lot to learn before he could start bringing the organization any real value. He’d given himself four more years to complete his lower schooling, according to his personal timeline plan. Once he was able to go to college, that was when he’d really be able to make things to help.

None of that stopped him from trying now, though. Tony was as determined as he was dedicated to proving himself in his father’s eyes and there was one way to do that that would ensure a smile on his father’s face. Tony was going to find Captain America.

Captain America had a serum flowing through his veins much like Tony’s father did, though it was not as powerful. Still, the Captain had made himself into quite a nuisance, destroying Hydra bases and getting in the way of his father’s plans. It had been years since the Captain had crashed his plane into the ocean and disappeared, but Tony’s father felt sure he had survived the crash and had been looking for him ever since. It would be disastrous if an organization like SHIELD found him before they could. If Tony could locate the Captain for his father… it would be huge. He would have earned his right to stand at his father’s side.

Tony needed information first, though, all the information he could get. He wasn’t allowed in the files about Captain America yet. Everything he knew about the man came from the stories his father would tell him, using them to teach him about the arrogance and bravado of their enemies as well as strategy and countless other valuable tools he would one day need to help Hydra toward greatness. Tony needed numbers now, though. He needed facts about where exactly the crash took place, so he could factor in ocean currents, weather patterns and about a million other conditions that would (hopefully) lead him to the Captain’s location.

That was why Tony was breaking into sub-basement level three of their Sokovian base. It was in an old castle, which Tony had always loved, and Baron Strucker had once told Tony that it was a property that had been in his family for generations. Baron Strucker was one of his father’s favorites and so Tony had visited the castle many times before, wandering around the place while the Baron and his father discussed business. There were many rooms that were considered off-limits to him, but Tony liked exploring anyway. He’d probably seen more of it than his father knew, which was how he had guessed exactly where anything pertaining to Captain America was kept.

Tony pulled the heavy metal door open at last, having to throw his entire body weight into the motion. He was small for his age, and the door was meant to withstand explosives. He would just have to make sure to keep taking the supplements his father gave him to build up his muscles more. The rooms on the other side of the door were dark and dusty, making Tony think of some sort of crypt. He tiptoed inside, pulling the door shut behind him so that no one would suspect. His father has made sure he spent time training with the Wolf Spiders of the Red Room. He knew how to cover his tracks.

Trying to disturb as little dust as possible, Tony crept further inside. The rooms looked almost like they could have been in an old bank, with drawers built right into the walls. Everything was labeled with a letter and number sequence code that he was going to have to figure out, but that was okay. Tony was good at codes. He just had to get a few data points to start with and he’d be off. It wasn’t until he poked his head into the third room that Tony found something _really_ cool, though.

It looked like a space rocket, almost. Or something that might be inside one. It was a metal tube with a door curved across its front, so someone could get inside and all sorts of things hooked up to it. The high-set window looked frosted over and the air around it was downright frigid. Tony absolutely _had_ to know what was inside.

There’d been a desk with a chair in the second room and Tony eagerly dragged the chair over to the machine, so he could climb up on the seat and try and peek inside. He rubbed at the window with his sleeve to wipe off the frost, only to nearly fall off his chair when he saw that there was a _man_ inside the tube. It was a _cryochamber!_ The man had long, dark hair and appeared to be sleeping, but that was all Tony could really see. Even still, he was nearly vibrating with excitement. They had actually achieved cryo! He had so many questions!

Tony scrambled down from the chair and immediately set to picking the locks on the nearest file drawers, rifling through to find any information he could about the cryochamber or the man inside. His original goal was shunted straight to the backburner in favor of this new discovery. His excitement left his trembling and giddy, a huge grin painting his face as he finally found a dark red folder with a black star on the front. The label on the side read _Winter Soldier Project: Subject One_ on it in Russian. Tony felt like he was going to vibrate right out of his skin as he opened it up to read its contents.

By the second page, that excitement had turned to nausea. The documents detailed the variety of horrifying experiments that had been run on the man, an American soldier found wounded and missing one of his arms. No name was listed, just an assigned number, but that only made Tony feel more keenly for this individual who had clearly _not_ been a willing participant. Tony knew Baron Strucker ran human experiments out of this base, trying to create superior soldiers for Hydra, but his subject were volunteers, ready to give their lives for the cause. The _chose_ their fate… This… This man had been stripped of everything, even his identity, and been tortured and brainwashed until, according to the file, there was nothing left but the orders he was given. At least until his programming began to break down.

There were references to his missions in the back of the file, too. Feeling numb, Tony scanned them until his eyes caught on two names in particular: Howard and Maria Stark. Something about those names sounded familiar to him, but Tony couldn’t be sure of where he’d heard them before. Checking the reference number listed, he searched the files in the room until he found the one that matched.

The mission had been an assassination. Howard Stark was the target, but no witnesses could be allowed to live. Tony read through the dry, detached description of that December evening’s events. It was clinical, the way it’d been written, like a report of roadway conditions instead of the taking of a life in cold blood. The report detailed how the Winter Soldier had caused the car the Starks were in to crash along a deserted stretch of road. He’d then approached the crash site and finished them off, only to report back to handlers that there was a third party also present in the vehicle. The Stark’s child was in the backseat, unconscious from what looked to be a headwound but alive. The Winter Soldier’s handlers had instructed him to take the child. The report didn’t say what had been done with the young Stark after that.

Heart pounding, Tony flipped over the last page of the report only to come face to face with a picture. It was clearly a posed shot, Howard and Maria stood close, posing for the camera. Their child was perched on Maria’s hip, head resting on her shoulder, but his face turned forward, thumb in his mouth. He was maybe two years old. He was also undeniably Tony himself.

Tony stared down at his own face, years younger, and struggled to breath.

It couldn’t be true! It couldn’t, it couldn’t, it _couldn’t!_ His father was Johann Schmidt, not Howard Stark. His mother had been a loyal Hydra operative, killed in the line of duty shortly after he was born, not Maria Stark. This was his _home_. He wasn’t some stolen child! It _wasn’t_ _true_. It couldn’t be. Because if it was, then everything Tony had been told about who he was, was a lie. Which meant he would have to reconsider everything he’d been told about everything. The implications would be… unimaginable.

Tony jumped at the loud scrape of metal against stone as the door at the front of the chamber, out of view of the room he was in, was opened.

“Anthony?” his father’s voice called, sounding disapproving.

For the first time, that voice sent a shiver or fear down his spine. Tony scrambled to shove the file about the Starks back where he had found it, scooping up the red file with the star on its front again instead. He spun around just as his father appeared in the doorway, eyes narrowed with upset.

“You know better than to wander places you are not allowed.”

His red lips were twisted down into a scowl, and Tony’s fingers tightened around the file he was holding to keep them from trembling. His mind cast around frantically for anything to derail the current course of the conversation.

“I want him,” he blurted out, bringing his father up short.

“What?”

Tony pointed toward the cryochamber.

“The Winter Soldier. I want him. I want to take over the project.”

His father’s gaze darted over to the cryochamber and some of the tension in his shoulders eased. Still, he shook his head in denial.

“The Winter Soldier project was disbanded, Anthony, and with good reason. Perhaps when you’re older, I’ll let you poke around a few of the files.”

“No, dad, I’ve _read_ the file,” Tony insisted, suddenly feeling a desperation to have this that was completely unexpected. If the Winter Soldier had been on that mission, he would know the truth of that night. Whatever it ended up being, Tony needed the truth. “The methods they were using- They were bound to break down! Psychologically speaking, they were going about it all wrong. Besides, for optimal regression, they really should have adjusted the electrical pulses by 3k times .638 Newtons based on the amount of chemicals being pumped into his system. They were causing more harm than good, really. They’re lucky they didn’t fry him completely. No wonder he was a complete automaton. With a few adjustments and proper training, the Winter Soldier would be capable of so much more. An asset that blindly follows orders serves a purpose, but it is never as valuable as an asset that knows what needs to be done and can carry out the mission without orders every step of the way. How many times have you told me that, dad? How many times have you talked about how important it is to be able to predict the needs of my superiors and be ready for them? To expect the same from those under my command and accept nothing less?”

The ridge where his father’s eyebrows would be if he had any rose in surprise and consideration.

“You think you can do better than some of the sharpest minds Hydra has ever known?”

“I know I can,” Tony promised, feeling the conviction all the way to his bones. “I can give the Winter Soldier a mind of his own while ensuring his unwavering loyalty.”

He held his father’s gaze as he considered it, praying fervently that he not be denied this request. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked to be entrusted with projects, and it wouldn’t be the first time his father had done so. It would, however, be the first time he was allowed something on such a scale.

“The Winter Soldier is useless to us in his current condition,” his father finally decided. “There will be nothing lost, should you fail. Very well. I will allow you this. But, Anthony,” he clasped his hands behind his back and frowned down as his son sternly, “I will not tolerate disappointment. You know what will happen if you have given promises you cannot deliver.”

Tony nodded sharply.

“Hail Hydra,” he intoned, as he had been taught all his life.

His father smiled approvingly, reaching out to tousle his hair.

“Hail Hydra, indeed.”


End file.
